William Seymour Tyler was professor of Latin, Greek, and Greek literature at Amherst College from 1832 to 1893. Amherst was still a small school then, where the faculty knew one another very well, and as the school's official historian for many decades, he was well suited to eulogize Orra White Hitchcock and, less than a year later, her husband, Edward Hitchcock. Like many people, Tyler greatly admired Orra for her piety, kindness, humility, and tireless hospitality toward the entire Amherst College community. Here, he praises her for setting such fine examples for her husband in how to live and die; credits her with nurturing Edward’s religious convictions, and acknowledges that she made Edward's life “endurable”. Tyler does mention the wonderful images she created for Edward’s work, but he was more interested in her as wife, mother, and the embodiment of Christian womanhood.